11.14.2023

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




Ted Cruz was becoming a Tea Party darling so the Boston Globe ran a profile of him and found this photo of him while at Harvard. 

  • The Texas Observer has a deep dive article with interactive graphics about the hijacking of local school boards by PACs and . . . 


    • . . . after messing around with the graphics for a while, lo and behold I found that Decatur ISD made an appearance due to a PAC funded by Dallas billionaire becoming involved in the last election. (I profiled the whole thing back in August.)

  • Wichita Falls just decided to give each of its teachers a $1,000 bonus. 

  • Political news. Stay with me yere. 
    • #1: Wise County lost a House Representative yesterday. Michael Burgess, who represents the south part of the county in District 26, announced that we will not see re-election. 
      • To keep all this straight, Wise County is split. The upper part of the county is represented by crazy Ronny Jackson in District 13 while Burgess has the lower part (in yellow) below.

      • The above is not confused with the Texas legislature's House where Wise County only has one representative: Dr. Lynn Stucky. 
    • #2: And then we had news that a second local House Rep is quitting: Rep. Pat Fallon announced he is leaving Congress.  He will, oddly, seek to go back to the Texas Senate in Austin in a seat currently held by Drew Springer who is not seeking re-election. 

      • This is his congressional district which will now open: 

      • If you think that impacts Wise County, you are wrong but understandably so. Fallon used to represent Wise County in the Texas senate. But even that senate district has been redrawn so, even if he is successful in getting his old seat back, he won't be representing us again. We are now in a Texas senate district that includes Highland Park, and that seat is held by Sen. Tan Parker who probably couldn't find Decatur: 

    • And we wonder why people are confused about who represents them. 
  • Clay County Sheriff's Office with some humor. 

  • There's another government shutdown deadline looming this week. It's hard to keep up. I think they'll get it passed. 

  • Demographics: If you are interested in this sort of thing, the New York Times has a long article on how Texas is no longer what you think it is. And how it will continue to change. (Free link.)

  • The government is coming up with new ways to kill people. 

  • The Business Second: This new grocery store, which "will span 123,000 square feet over the 17-acre property", is at Bonds Ranch Road and 287, seven miles from the Wise County line.

  • Random real estate note in the Dallas Morning News today:


  • Meant to mention this yesterday: The parents of NY Giants QB Tommy Devito are the most New Jersey looking couple ever.
  • The Decatur City Council voted last night 5-1 to move its regularly scheduled meeting from Christmas Day to one week earlies. (And, yes, the one dissenter was doing a bit.)



at 8:30 AM

11.13.2023

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




Greg Abbott posted the above (it's still up) when he was running for governor. Who could have predicted that Texas would become the mass shooting capital of the world under his watch?

  • A Watauga man and his wife get into an argument on Saturday night as they were driving on 287 at Blue Mound road.  They pulled over. The husband got out in anger. And then we was killed as he made the unfortunate decision to try and walk across the highway. 


  • Just hitting the wires moments ago: "WASHINGTON (AP) — Secret Service agents protecting Naomi Biden, President Joe Biden’s granddaughter, opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in the nation’s capital." It happened at midnight last night.
  • "Five American service members were killed during a training exercise Friday after a military aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean Sea."  (Interesting note: During the 1967 Six Day War, Israel accidentally bombed a U.S. ship in the Mediterranean off the Gaza Strip, killing 34.)

  • In a strange incident with no real details given, a SWAT officer and "two hostages" were killed during a raid in an Austin residential neighborhood early Saturday. (Google streetview of neighborhood.) 


  • Rep. Tim Scott, who was on the Republic debate stage a few of days ago, abruptly announced he was quitting the race last night on Fox News. The host was very surprised. 

  • Trump is going full Hitler.  Hell, even Hitler didn't say the following things before he ascended to the leader of Germany. This is getting scary, and I cannot believe it is actually happening. 
    • Concentration camps? 

    • He didn't stop there. On Saturday he said in a post and at a rally (video), "We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." The word "vermin" is 100% Hitler and refers to extermination.  Incredible.

    • You've heard the following old quote before and this is how it actually reads. It's often misquoted, but here it is direct from the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. 

  • Trump officially filed to be on the Texas primary ballot on Saturday, the first day of filing. And look who he got to do it for him: The literal Three Stooges.  Ronny Jackson, Ken Paxton, and Sid Miller. 
  • If you've got nutty friends who say nutty things, they get their news from sources like this: 
  • David Spiller (R-Jacksboro)  is still on his immigration bill tour, this time with an appearance on CBS.  Meanwhile, thirty former immigration judges signed off on a statement saying the bill was unconstitutional. 
  • The Aggies fired head coach Jimbo Fisher yesterday and, as a result, will have to pay him $76 million. Normally under contract law, and the default common law, is that he is entitled to the all the money due him under the contract unless he gets a job somewhere else during the remaining contract years. That's called an offset. But that doesn't apply to Jimbo. Look at that last sentence: 
    • The Aggies beat Mississippi State 51-10 on Saturday night, but minutes ago they just fired their head coach, too. It's carnage everywhere.
  • UT running back Jonathon Brooks is out for the season after tearing his ACL against TCU.
  • I can't stand Rep. Jeff Leach but he was wrongfully sued for defamation in Parker County by a nutty Texas secessionist. The judge dismissed it. But now Leach wants $90,000 in attorney's fees and, under Texas law, he's probably going to get it. 
  • Photo of Kennedy at Arlington Cemetery for Veteran's Day sixty years ago -- eleven days before his death. 
  • I looked for a Texas newspaper cover that had Jimbo's firing on the front page, but I couldn't find one. So I went with yesterday's Star-Telegram: 



at 8:31 AM

11.10.2023

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




A lot going on there. And we had references to John Bradley (of the Michael Morton fiasco) and Abel Reyna (of the Waco Twin Peaks shooting fiasco)

  • Well, this turned out exactly as expected. 

  • I heard that the Boyd motorcycle cop, who works 287 on a contract basis for New Fairview, was badly injured in an accident in Forestburg while headed home. Sounds like he will recover, but it wasn't pretty.

  • The official Wise County Republican Party, which sometimes can act reasonable and sometimes acts like it is controlled by the MAGA extremists in its midst, voted last night 16-1 to censure Rep. Lynn Stucky who is, by all accounts, a normal conservative Republican and definitely not a nutcase. 
    • Stucky defended himself yesterday here. He called the censure as the equivalent of " a 'smoke-filled backroom' arrangement among a handful of party leaders who seek to rig the system to favor their own preferred candidate."  He's kind of right about that. 
    • If the local Republican party is going to interject itself into a local contested Republican primary -- something underheard of in the history of the county -- at least it needs to be fair. In that regard, no word yet on whether they will also censor a candidate against Stucky who took $55,000 from the West Texas Oil Men PAC whose leader met with an avowed white supremist and antisemite. (The party itself has already given away the money it received from the PAC because of the  controversy.)
  • Another reason not to trust Elon Musk.

  • The official Texas prosecutor's association yesterday pointed out that Rep. David Spiller's (R-Jacksboro) revised immigration bill -- which creates a state crime for illegally entering the country (or being in the country illegally) and then allowing Texas law enforcement to dump them back over the border by simply getting a local JP to OK it -- seems to run afoul of the Texas Constitution.  It clearly has federal constitutional problems, but no one had noticed this part of the state constitution before.

  • There was a horrible attack by car on some deputies in Florida yesterday. The shocking video was released.


  • Jared Leto, for some reason, legally climbed the outside of the upper portion of the Empire State Building yesterday. 


  • Fun fact on the pay of Texas legislators. 

  • Here are the states which have let their citizens vote on abortion rights after Roe was overturned. Every one of them voted pro-choice. Texas would do the same if our legislature let the people decide instead of leaving the decision to themselves.

  • We had rare playoff football on a Thursday night (boo!) for Wise County last night: Decatur won. 45-14, over Dumas.  Paradise won, 49-13, over Vernon. Alvord fell to Coleman, 47-7.
  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office, despite having a full male DNA profile, has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 4 years and 127 days.



at 8:30 AM
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